Not to rehash discussions, but it is one of those things that is really hard to isolate specific causes (and if those causes are recurrent or isolated and numerous), but easy to say the end result is bad, and ultimately that is the problem.
We do know that player acquisition and development were not on the same page for years (also player dev and player dev were not on the same page), and that player development was behind for the decade+ before that. I do know that after Ortiz the front office pulled away from huge bonuses, and that the next classes under Klentak were a disaster as none of the $400k+ bonus guys (particularly the arms) outside of Francisco Morales and Simon Muzziotti even made the high minors. The draft did the same sort of reactionary fluctuation as single tool guys were replaced by almost no tool guys as they lacked an understanding of what was a good hit tool.
To allentown's point, it then gets hard to separate front office philosophy from boots on the ground. Sal and his team could have spent the entire Klentak time period suggesting future impact guys to sign, but not getting the sign off to give $3M+ bonuses, I am not saying that is the case, but that is sort of the unknown.
What we know now is that the org is largely pulling in the same direction (is it the right direction, I think that is still largely TBD) and that they have revamped what Latin America training looks like. I do think they have a better understanding of what hit tool and approach look like. I know Bergolla gets crap here, and there is a real chance he never gets strong enough, but his approach and contact skills are top of the chart and that is also true of guys like Starlyn Caba. Both in the draft and somewhat internationally you can start to at least see a method to the madness. Once again, I don't know if they are good at it yet, but it isn't obviously wrong like the past where you saw a LGJ or Randolph or Haseley and knew immediately it was a bad choice.
